The national solution provider's tech experts and services team housed in a state-of-the-art Houston Solutions Center have saved customers time and time again from natural disasters like Hurricane Harvey.

Amazon surpassed Microsoft in market value for the first time on Wednesday evening after markets closed. The two market leaders directly compete in the cloud, and Amazon has attributed 10 percent of its recent growth to Amazon Web Services.

The small ISV based in Los Angeles, led by a pioneer in the CRM market who knows the intricacies of the channel, is leveraging alliances with industry heavyweights to rapidly expand a partner community.

Sullivan's hire comes less than a year after Boston, Mass.-based Turbonomic signed former Microsoft sales leader Jennifer Heard as channel chief, and it means her role is changing to focus exclusively on the cloud as senior vice president of cloud partnerships.

The software giant shared the plans at a New York event for more "self-driving" cloud services. "You can't just dabble in the cloud wars. There has to be a long-term commitment and that’s what Oracle is doing here," one partner said.

The Chicago-based investment firm said it wants to guide the Microsoft-aligned business process automation vendor in its next phase of growth. CFO Eric Johnson will replace current CEO John Burton in the top job.

Security specialist Symantec will now be bolstering security to for Microsoft Azure and Office 365 environments via an extended partnership between the two companies, making it easier for businesses to adopt hybrid cloud, while giving partners more cloud security opportunities.

Thomas H. Lee Partners agreed to buy the developer of open-source enterprise content management and business process software for an undisclosed sum, with a strategy for continued growth and market disruption.

'There's tremendous affinity to the channel across the management team and the channel is our growth engine, so we intend to nurture it even more now,' says Ali Din, who will lead marketing across both companies.